Unpaid Huffington Post bloggers still unpaid

12/12/12 2:04 PM EST

An appeals court affirmed on Wednesday the dismissal of the lawsuit by unpaid Huffington Post bloggers, alleging they were owed $105 million from AOL's purchase of the website.

The bloggers lost their appeal to have the lawsuit restored when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Wednesday affirmed the earlier decision of the District Court to dismiss the case, Reuters reported.

"We have always believed this case had no merit and are pleased that the 2nd Circuit Court agreed with us," Rhoades Alderson, a spokesman for The Huffington Post, told Reuters.

The bloggers claimed The Huffington Post owed them $105 million from the $315 million AOL purchase because “that value was created by the content they submitted” to the website, the court wrote in its decision.

“Plaintiffs’ basic contention is that they were duped into providing free content for The Huffington Post, based upon the representation that their work would be used to provide a public service and would not be supplied or sold to ‘Big Media,’” the court stated. “Had they known that The Huffington Post would use their efforts not solely in support of liberal causes, but, in fact, to make itself desirable as a merger target for a large media corporation, plaintiffs claim they would never have supplied material for The Huffington Post. The problem with plaintiffs’ argument is that it has no basis.”

And the bloggers always understood prior to the merger “they would receive compensation only in the form of exposure and promotion. Indeed, these arrangements have never changed.”

While it’s “no doubt a great disappointment to find that The Huffington Post did not live up to the ideals plaintiffs ascribed to it, plaintiffs have made no factual allegations that, if taken as true would permit the inference that The Huffington Post deceived the plaintiffs or otherwise received a benefit at the expense of the plaintiffs such that equity and good conscience require restitution,” the court stated.

The now-dismissed case had aimed for class-action status for the 9,000 unpaid bloggers at the website, Reuters reported.